"Think of it!" exclaimed young Frost, as he took a great whiff at his
pipe; "here we are--the middle of the winter--and not a guest in the
house. Why we used to have a dozen travellers round the bar here, and the
whole house bustling. I've known my father to serve a hundred and more
with rum on a night like this. Now we do a fine business if we serve as
many in a winter. Times have changed since we were boys."

"Aye," Tom agreed, "and it isn't so long ago, either. It seemed to me as
if the whole county used to be here on a Saturday night."

"I'm thinking," resumed Dan musingly, "of throwing up the business,
what's the use of pretending to keep an inn? If it wasn't for mother
and for Nancy, I'd clear out, boy; go off and hunt my fortune. As it is,
with what I make on the farm and lose on the house, I just pull through
the year."

"By gad," exclaimed Tom, "I'd go with you, Dan. I'm tired to my soul with
reading law in father's office. Why, you and I haven't been farther than
Coventry to the county fair, or to Perth Anhault to make a horse trade.
I'd like to see the world, go to London and Paris. I've wanted to go to
France ever since that queer Frenchman was here--remember?--and told us
those jolly tales about the Revolution and the great Napoleon. We were
hardly more than seven or eight then, I guess."

"I would like to go, hanged if I wouldn't," said Dan. "I'm getting more
and more discontented. But there's not much use crying for the moon, and
France might as well be the moon, for all of me." He relapsed then into a
brooding silence. It was hard for an inn-keeper to be cheerful in
midwinter with an empty house. Tom too was silent, dreaming vividly, if